My book is a collection of fifteen essays, focusing on retirement as an opportunity to gain awareness of the inner dynamic -emotions, thought patterns and behavioral habits, that govern our lives. Spiritual lives awakens as we recognize, examine, and transform these forces. The essays examine the issues that retirement poses: the difference between solitude and loneliness; the search for purpose in the face of physical weakening; the need for and pleasures of community; learning to deal with loss and grief; the special role of the elderly vis a vis the young. My work is not a “how to” manual. It doesn’t presume to give advice, nor it is c sociological study of the aged. It speaks from no professorial podium, but from the porch, an ordinary place, in and of the everyday. It aims to provoke thinking by examining my experience, its conundrums. gaffs, and moments of insight, as well as my life long association with thinkers and poets and their occupation with the inner lives of human beings.